Dirty Little Secret - Jon Stock

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minutes. I need to give him my word that we’re not.’

      ‘We’re not. Of course we’re bloody not.’

      ‘So why the hell’s he ringing Daniel Marchant from a secure MI6 landline?’

      ‘I have no idea. He might not have been. The last time the NSA supposedly intercepted a call from Dhar, it was a set-up and six US Marines died.’

      ‘They want access to Vauxhall Cross, to search the building floor by floor, room by room. And they want us to arrest Daniel Marchant.’

      ‘I would advise against that. Dhar may call him again, which would be more useful to us.’

      Fielding might be too late to save Marchant, but the Americans would be allowed into Legoland over his dead body. Unfortunately, he suspected he was already dead. Denton would have his job by morning.

      ‘What are Fort Monckton’s orders?’

      ‘To keep Marchant on site. Don’t worry, he’s being closely guarded.’

      ‘I hope he is – for all our sakes.’

      Fielding didn’t have time to feel threatened. ‘What did Dhar say to him?’

      ‘Marchant asked who was speaking, and Dhar said, “Your pilot.” That’s it. As if we needed to remind the Americans of MI6’s role in the Fairford attack. Marchant should have dealt with Dhar when he had a chance.’

      In other words, Fielding thought, ignoring the PM, Dhar’s message wasn’t as important as the fact of the call itself. He was telling Marchant where he was. And it looked as if he was still in Britain, which meant that something must have gone catastrophically wrong with his escape plan.

      There were numerous MI6 facilities across the country, all of which had secure landlines that were routed through the main switchboard. Fielding hadn’t been entirely straight with the PM: although the numbers would show up as MI6, each one had its own unique signature that could be identified by a private-key-encrypted handset. He could only assume that Marchant had seen at once where Dhar was calling from, and had hung up.

      ‘Tell the President that Marchant’s going nowhere, and we haven’t got Dhar.’

      ‘So where the hell is he?’

      ‘I don’t know.’ Only one person knew, and that was Daniel Marchant. Fielding would call him now, try to warn him, but he feared it was already too late. ‘It’s important we don’t jump to hasty conclusions, given Dhar’s history of phone calls,’ he continued. ‘You know it won’t look good, the Americans going into Legoland?’

      ‘The truth is, Marcus, I’m not sure I can stop them.’

      15

      Marchant didn’t look back at the gatehouse as he walked away. He knew already that calls would be made, measures taken. What he wasn’t prepared for was the speed with which security would be ramped up on the base. As he passed under the archway and back into the courtyard, he heard voices to his left. Two guards were approaching from the direction of the indoor firing range, stopping to chat outside the main door to the accommodation block. They wore plain blue uniforms, and weren’t the usual ‘MoDplods’ who guarded military bases.

      He had run up against them once on a training exercise when he was an IONEC graduate. After being dropped in the centre of Portsmouth, he and the rest of his class had been told that they had one hour to get back to their rooms without using the base’s main entrance. Marchant had swum round from Gosport, only to be met on the beach by a guard who had given him a very physical welcome.

      Tensing at the memory, Marchant retreated into the shadows of the archway, out of sight of the two men and the gatehouse. Above him were the rooms where visiting top brass stayed. (Fielding had a room reserved solely for his use.) Marchant couldn’t hear what the guards were saying, but after several minutes one of them walked on, leaving the other outside the main door, which was at the northern end of the accommodation block. Behind him was an alleyway that led through to a flight of stone steps down to the beach. Which was where Marchant wanted to go.

      He felt for the kitchen knife under his jacket and then cut left, keeping one eye on the guard as he kept close to a wall that ran across to a hangar. It was in there that he had been trained in anti-kidnap techniques. British diplomats and royalty were occasionally sent down for training too, which had always been a laugh, as the IONEC students got to play the bad guys.

      After working his way around the hangar, Marchant came to the lab where he had learned how to forge passports and take covert film footage. From here it would be possible to approach the guard at the main door without being seen, providing he kept behind a parked van. He inched forward until the guard was barely five yards away.

      It was clear that he had been told to stay where he was, but every few minutes he went for a short walk, wandering away from Marchant down to an external staircase that led up to the first floor of the accommodation block. There was a chance that Marchant could run the five yards and slip down the steps to the beach during one of these walkabouts, but the risk was too great.

      He waited for the guard to set off again, but it was as if he had suddenly become more diligent. For ten minutes he remained rooted to his post outside the door. Marchant could hear his breathing, the sound of his shoes as he rocked gently back and forth, the slow rhythm of bored guards everywhere. He wondered if it was the same man who had met him on the beach. It had been an unnecessary show of force. Marchant had been exhausted, having failed to anticipate the strong tide, and he had got closer to his room than any other student. But as their instructor, a former sergeant in the SBS, had pointed out, they weren’t being trained to become nursery-school teachers.

      The guard was finally on the move, a slow meander down the side of the building towards the staircase. Marchant ran across the narrow gap between them, checking again for the knife in his jacket. In one movement, he pulled back the guard’s head by his hair and punched him hard in the throat. As the man doubled up, clutching at his neck, Marchant kneed him in the face and brought a hand down hard across the back of his head. Before his body collapsed to the ground, Marchant was already dragging him over to the doorway. He pulled him inside and propped him against the wall.

      ‘He doesn’t look well,’ a familiar voice said.

      Marchant glanced up to see Lakshmi standing at the top of the stairs. She looked terrible, sallow around the eyes. Had her wrist become infected?

      ‘He’ll live,’ Marchant said. Lakshmi had surprised him, and she knew it. ‘I’ve got to get out of here. Are you OK?’

      ‘You should have woken me. I could have helped,’ she said, nodding at the guard. Marchant didn’t doubt her, even with one wrist in plaster. He had only seen her engage in physical combat once, and it had been enough to convince him that the Farm, the CIA’s equivalent of the Fort, trained their people well.

      ‘I was going to. Fielding’s in trouble. He’s taking too much heat from the attack at Fairford. I need to see him, tell him about the traitor. It might be enough to save his job.’

      ‘Can’t you call him?’

      ‘Too risky.’

      ‘So what do you want me to do? Kiss you goodbye at the picket fence and go back to bed?’

      ‘Of course not.’

      Marchant wanted to confide in her, explain why he really needed to get away from Fort Monckton. He could tell her about the phone call from Dhar, and take her with him. But he knew he had to go alone. She had already become too close to him for her career to survive. If she was found with Dhar, she would spend the rest of her life behind bars.

      ‘I want you to go the gatehouse, chat up the guard on duty, distract him from the security-camera screens.’

      ‘Flash my tits at him, you mean?’ She was angry, the sudden outburst out of character.

      ‘I’ve got

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